AWARDS

Here's the 9 Films that Made the Academy's Foreign Language Shortlist

by Alex Billington
December 19, 2014
Source: Variety

The awards continue marching on, and the latest development comes straight from The Academy. They have announced (via Variety) the nine official films shortlisted for the Best Foreign Language Film. That means these nine make the cut, and will proceed forward into the next round of voting before being eliminated again down to five films for the official nominations annoncement on January 15th. On one hand, one of my favorite films of the year, Force Majeure, made the cut along with Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida. However, my other favorites, Xavier Dolan's Mommy and the Dardennes‘ Two Days, One Night, did not make the cut - quite surprisingly since they're both such great films that deserve to be considered. See the full list below.

Here are the nine films shortlisted for the Best Foreign Language Oscar officially this year:

Wild Tales from Argentina - Directed by Damián Szifrón
Tangerines (Mandariinid) from Estonia - Directed by Zaza Urushadze
Corn Island (Simindis kundzuli) from Georgia - Directed by George Ovashvili
Timbuktu from Mauritania - Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako
Accused (Lucia de B.) from the Netherlands - Directed by Paula van der Oest
Ida from Poland - Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski
Leviathan from Russia - Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev
Force Majeure from Sweden - Directed by Ruben Östlund
The Liberator from Venezuela - Directed by Alberto Arvelo

So there you have it. From Variety: "the shortlist will be narrowed down to the category’s five nominees by invited committees in New York, Los Angeles and London." The final five will be announced on January 15th with the rest of the nominations for the Academy Awards. This category topped out at 83 films selected by their respective counties - The Film Stage has a fantastic rundown of all of them. These nine seen above are strong selections, from Leviathan to Force Majeure to Wild Tales, a cathartic delight, to The Liberator with Édgar Ramírez as Simon Bolivar. But they really are missing some excellent films like: Mommy, Two Days, One Night, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep, Iceland's Life in a Fishbowl and plenty others. But that's that.

We'll be watching the awards as we head into the final few months, with the Oscar nominations arriving in January just after the Golden Globes. Force Majeure, Ida, Leviath & Tangerines were nominated over there.

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